3.5/5 Stars


This book had a really interesting concept and I definitely haven't read anything quite like it. 3 different women are taken from their lives and thrown into scary and dangerous situations. Who did this to them? Why did they do this to them? Why does the sky look weird?

Then it turns out it is a bunch of men that think women are beneath them and underestimate them. It was a bit clichéd. It was a fun story still and I enjoyed it for the most part. I did find myself losing interest in several spots though.

Well after reading this I am a little scared to keep posting my thoughts about Horror, True Crime, & Thriller stories on the internet… but alas.

Good Girls Dont Die is a super interesting & unique storyline. We all watch movies or read books and think to ourselves, “I definitely would not have done it that way” or even… “I could do better.” (Well not me, I dont want to be dropped into one of these stories! lol) But, what if we actually had to prove it.

This story follows 3 women who woke up in their own weird situation. Celia wakes up in a Cozy Mystery, Allie wakes up in a Cabin in the Woods Style Horror Movie, and Maggie wakes up in a YA Dystopian Story. But as each women take in their surroundings, things don’t make sense.

I liked this. I really liked how the author, while having a super entertaining story idea, really interwove important Feminist themes throughout. How far men will go in & how dangerous they can be.

While I think there are great themes, a fast plot, and an overall important message… some things were lacking for me. I personally didn’t like the stories being SO separate, I even went back and looked to see if I was reading a collection of short stories. Remaining spoiler free… I thought how the ending came together, the timing in particular, was just too coincidental to be believable, not that waking up in these situations is believable either… but I wish we got more.

Overall, I liked it. This was my first Christina Henry book and I definitely want to pick up more of hers in the future!

Celia is living a life that she is sure isn’t hers. She wakes up to a daughter and husband she does not know and in a town that just doesn’t seem quite right. We leave her when Allie’s story takes centerstage.
She is somewhere in a secluded cabin, with her two friends and their boyfriends. But when the body count starts to rise, Allie realizes some things just don’t make sense. We then leave her and are dropped into Maggie’s story.
She and a group of other women must navigate a maze if they want to survive. Soon, Maggie is not sure who she can trust, but she knows she must find a way out before she winds up being another victim.
All of these stories eventually come together, and even though I wasn’t a fan of the ending, I loved the journey. Allie’s story was my favorite, but Celia and Maggie’s stories had me furiously flipping pages too. My first book by this author, and I definitely want to read more of her books.

Good Girls Don’t Die tells the story of three women from different walks of life who all find themselves in impossible situations. The one thing the women do have in common is their shared love of stories. Each with their own favorite genre, they find themselves a part of a common trope that they are all too familiar with. They must use what they have learned from their favorite books to make it out alive.

First we meet Celia. Celia wakes up in a strange house with a man who claims to be her husband and a child who claims to be her daughter. With no memory of her past, the whole town insists that she’s married with a child but deep inside Celia knows they are all lying.

Next we are introduced to Allie. Allie is heading on a weekend trip with friends to celebrate her birthday. When they arrive at an isolated cabin, things start going awry. Allie feels that something is way off but none of her friends believe her.

Lastly, we meet Maggie. Maggie just woke up in a nightmarish situation. She is forced to survive a dangerous enigma in order to be reunited with her daughter. Maggie can’t understand how she got there or why someone would put her there.

Good Girls Dont Die is a fast paced, action packed, high stakes thriller. The plot is completely original and highly entertaining. Initially, it reads like a series of three short stories but the end brings all of these stories together in a shocking twist. Without giving anything away, I will say that the book is a mix of The Truman Show, Michael Myers, and The Hunger Games. I had so much fun reading this one and I found it impossible to put it down. I highly recommend it!

Good Girls Don’t Die by Christina Henry will be available on November 14. A massive thanks to Berkley Pub for the gifted copy!

When the ARC approval for Good Girls Don’t Die hit my inbox, I put my hands in the air and exclaimed “holy shit” to my mildly terrified husband. To me, a new Christina Henry book is an event. Henry wrote two of my favorite books of the past few years (Lost Boy, and Near the Bone), so she has my undying devotion.

In Good Girls Don’t Die, three women find themselves in bizarre situations. Celia wakes up with no memory of her life, despite living in a house with people who are apparently her family. Allie is dragged by her friends and their awful boyfriends to a cabin in the woods, with no memory of how they arrived, and a disconcerting lack of noise and bugs. And Maggie finds herself in a Hunger Games/Squid Game scenario, where she has to tackle a series of obstacles to ensure her daughter’s safety. However, the thing that links these women together is far more disturbing than all the scenarios combined.

Christina Henry’s writing is always a joy; uncomplicated prose, endearing, relatable characters, and engrossing plots. The fantastical world of Good Girls Don’t Die isn’t too far removed from reality, and it reflects the lengths men will go to in order to “punish” women who report them for abuse, or try to retain custody of their children, or flat out reject them. Throughout the book, I was reminded of the Margaret Atwood quote: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

It was a lot of fun to see this novel unravel, and I found the ending particularly gratifying. I hope this will spark some conversations about feminism, misogyny, violence, and power.

FAN-TASTIC!!!

Christina Henry has created a tribute to horror films and mystery books while also taking a wider view at how woman are cast and treated in these all too familiar stories.

When Celia wakes up, she is someone else's house and someone else's life.
Allie in turn is forced on a trip with her friends to a cabin in the woods. A sharp-edged, supremely twisty thriller. Finally Maggie awakens to find herself dealing with a story very close to The Hunger Games Plot.

All three women recognize the tropes they are in but not how they got there or how they can get out! When it becomes clear that the stories are more life and death they become panicked and committed to surviving. What is really happening here?

I would just love to see this as a movie, Jordan Peele could do it justice. Henry has created a true iconic story!
#Berkley #ChristinaHenry #Goodgirlsdontdie

Love Christina Henry and have enjoyed all of her books so far. Really live the concept of Good Girls but it needed a good editing pass - a lot of word and phrase repetitions that pulled out out of the story.
The 2 chapters were tight and suspenseful, the third messy, and fourth seemed as though it got thrown on the page and no one looked at it again.

Again, however, conceptually great and the first two chapters were incredible. I love the ways Henry plays with beat and cadence in her writing as well as diction and phrasing. I’ll always pick up her next one.

When Celia wakes up, she can’t remember anything, but knows the man and child in front of her are not hers. This is not her life.

Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip, but then they end up on a quiet friend’s weekend in the middle of nowhere woods. No one believes Allie when she tells them something is very, very wrong.

Maggie just wants to be at home with her daughter, but she is not safe, and doesn’t know how she got there. She’ll have to fight with everything she has in order to survive.

There’s only one way out. Can they make it?

This book was a wild ride. I loved the unconventional format. I was a little leery at first that we were being told three different stories, but I like how they were interwoven and especially how they came together. I loved Celia’s story the most, because it was the most relatable for me. I did enjoy all the characters though. I enjoyed the twists that kept coming along the way, although the one at the end was kind of a letdown. I felt that villain was a let down and a story that been told before. I did still enjoy this one, I was just let down at the end when it had been built for a masterpiece.

Despite the ending not really working for me, this was still an interesting and fun story, and I would recommend it.

Thank you so much to Berkley Pub, and Netgalley, @netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

A fun ride the whole way through! If you like the meta-vibe of the movie Cabin in the Woods, you’ll love this novel. Three women encounter three different book tropes - cozy murder mystery, remote cabin, and dystopian maze - but by whom and why? Some of this seemed to wrap up a little too nicely, but it was really enjoyable. I really liked the first character’s murder mystery the most and almost wish we could have stayed there throughout the whole book.

Thank you Berkley For Good Girls Don't Die! I had a lot of fun reading this mystery, I was completely sucked inby the character and plot and loved the moments that brought me into my love for horror and odes to YA and dystopian tropes. I found the pacing to work really well for a fast, grab a cup of tea and a cozy blanket stormy night book (which we have had recently so this really was the perfect Fall stormy night read).

This worked for me as I felt it was also a little be of a celebration of women who love to read, to mystery and scary read fans who love tropes and can't put down a good book. I noticed that despite the 3 POVs, I felt completely engaged with each story and never confused and instead found that as each story was told, I had a better appreciation for the other characters' stories and little details came together well (nicely done!).

This is my first book from this author and I will look at her backlist!

I was so completely blown away by this book that I read it all in one sitting! I love the twists and turns and little winks to horror/YA/dystopian YA novels. Great female protagonists that give the reader someone to root for. Christina Henry has been one of my favorite authors since I read her Alice series and I am thrilled Good Girls Don't Die was so amazing!

4.5/5 - WOO BOY this is such a fun story! My first by Christina Henry--is this what I've been missing by not reading her other books? Perhaps I need to rectify this pretty quick.

This is a thriller-y horror story that is absolutely perfect for book lovers. Three women wake up inside a scenario eerily similar to the books they enjoy reading, but they have no recollection of how they got there. The tropes Ms. Henry used to tell these stories are ones that are familiar to us. Instead of alternating POVS and telling their stories concurrently, the author chose to tell Celia's story first, followed by Allie, and then Maggie. And then the stories come together at the end. I really loved this story structure because I was able to be fully invested in each woman's POV without having to go back and remember little details that I missed several chapters ago. The story moved quickly and I always wanted to keep reading when it was time for me to put the book down and adult for a little while.

The three POVs are all terrifying in different ways. It's sort of interesting to imagine what we would do if we were in situations similar to Celia, Allie, and Maggie. There is commentary on how women are treated and viewed woven throughout this story, but it wasn't preachy or loud. I also think there is a little bit of all of us in each of these women-I know I saw myself in all three of them.

This was just great fun to read. I definitely had books that I should have probably read before this one but since I didn't really enjoy my last #spookySeptember read, I bumped this one up because the description sounded good. Thank you to Berkley Publishing for sending me an early digital copy to review via Netgalley.

Celia may have total amnesia but she can still tell something is wrong with her small town life. Her attempts to figure out her identity while running an Italian restaurant are interrupted when the village harridan is murdered. Allie's birthday trip to the beach with her girlfriends is hijacked by their boyfriends and they all end up at a cabin in the woods. Something lurks in the forest. Maggie is one of ten women kidnapped and forced into a maze full of lethal obstacles. Each protagonist navigates the tropes of a popular genre as the gore slowly intensifies in this suspenseful horror novel. The finale is absurd but not dissatisfying.

I never connected with Good Girls Don’t Die which I hate because I enjoy Christina Henry and her writing specifically her fairy tale remix stories such as Alice and Lost Boy. I just felt that Henry never met her highs from those prior books and I felt that she wrote a standard mystery

Well, that was a wild ride! Good Girls Don't Die is a twisty and mind-bending read that will keep you reading long into the night. It's kind of The Most Dangerous Game meets Halloween meets The Hunger Games meets a cozy mystery novel meets some kick-ass feminism? I realize that probably doesn't exactly help a whole lot, but let's just say that it's an unconventional mismash of genres that makes for one crazy and entertaining story.

This novel is really three separate tales that converge at the end. I enjoyed the first two storylines the most since I'm a huge fan of both horror and murder mysteries. The third delves into the realm of dystopian fiction which isn't one of my usual genres, but I still found it to be an exciting read that was definitely the most action-packed of the three.

The protagonists are all women, and they're strong women – there are no passive victims here. They're all intelligent and resourceful and determined to get to the bottom of their respective mysteries. And when they all get together? The bad guys better watch out!

I did find the ending to be a bit lacking in action as compared to the rest of the book, but it was still so much fun. I would have loved to have known what happened after the book ended, perhaps through newspaper articles or an epilogue of sorts?

Overall, I found this book to be a thrilling, twisty, and delightful read. Final rating: 4.25 stars, rounded down.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.

This was a twisty and interesting read- as soon as the first part got really good, it ended abruptly, only to start another fascinating part, and it was really interesting how the 3 parts meshed together. Thrilling, scary, I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting.

Historically, to start a Christina Henry book is to finish one in as close as possible to a sustained single gulp, and GOOD GIRLS DON'T DIE was no exception. I loved the three different threads and premises, even if I am not a fan of all three genres. Highly recommended to readers of Kelley Armstrong and Gretchen McNeill.

Maybe I'm just too stupid for this book.... I was thoroughly confused and had no idea what I was reading. Maybe that's the point though? Maybe the readers are supposed to be confused and unsure, and if that's the case then great! But when I'm confused while reading I don't feel motivated to pick it back up, and if I'm not motivated to pick it back up, then I don't feel its fair to the book or the author to keep reading it because I won't give it a fair shot. I've tried a book by this author before and didn't finish it either, but I was hoping this would be different because the concept sounded really interesting. Alas, I think I'm just not the target audience for this author. I'm excited to see what others think when this comes out, people who do love Henry's other works.

Author Christina Henry has written some fabulous books over the years but her upcoming novel Good Girls Don’t Die, to me, is one of her best. The way she blends stories and genres together topped with amazing strong female characters makes this novel a must read for horror fans, mystery fans, dystopian fans alike! If you are a fan of Henry’s, make her newest novel a must read and if you haven’t read Henry yet, this book is the perfect starter into her amazing worlds of story telling!

I really loved Christina Henry’s “Near the None” and while I liked this, I didn’t love it. I loved the storytelling angle and it was a fast read. I’ll suggest this book to others, but I’d probably suggest “Near the Bone” first.